Category Archives: Projects

I have decided to use GitHub to publish scripts, SQL queries and procedures, and custom management packs for all public content related to SCOM. I did this because it enables me to manage all my content in a central online repository that can be easily accessible, searched, and subscribed to in a feed reader.

If you’re not familiar with GitHub, it is a Git web-based hosting service which offers a lot of great functionality that enables the community to store, share, search content, and collaborate on projects. You could think of it as a sort of Source Safe or TFS application. You are welcome to branch and pull the projects I store on GitHub, or just use the content I publish for whatever you need.

There isn’t much content up there at this time, but I did throw a few things up there to get things started. I will still be blogging with code snippets, but all the managed code will be stored on GitHub from now on. Blog content may be outdated, so always check the GitHub source for the latest revision of code.

Can you take 30 seconds to check it out and let me know what you think? By the way, I’m trying twitterfeed for the first time, so I apologize in advance if you see an ‘out of order’ update from me.

List of updates: user registration and sign in with OpenID and Google, Twitter Bootstrap 3 styling, HTTPS/SSL for all pages, Font Awesome icon suite, recently published content feed from various blogs (and growing), color-coded search results that indicate content age, site news and alerts on front page, and a handful of other tweaks.

I invite you to register on the site. Although there is nothing to interact with quite yet, in the coming weeks there will be some fun and useful actions you can perform on the site that should spark your interest.

The next phase of the search tool will include adding functionality for users to submit different types of data from various sources directly to the indexer.

As a side note – I haven’t blogged for a while now due to several different projects going that have taken up more time than I have in a day! I’m looking forward to dedicating some time to writing more about management pack authoring and other fun stuff.

If you have tried to reach the SCOMskills blog over the past day, you would have seen the maintenance and redirect page. That’s because there has been a lot of changes happening on the back-end, but everything should be running fine now.

Here’s what has happened over the past couple days:

SCOMskills website moved, redesigned, and re-launched! The new design has a completely new look, is much faster under the hood, and will enable us to include more dynamic content going forward. Check out the resources section – this is where visitors will be able to access some cool stuff. We’ll even be opening up sandbox/demo portals for you to see what we’re working on. There isn’t much there quite yet, but check back often – it will be updated frequently.

The blog has moved from http://scomskills.com/blog to http://blog.scomskills.com. All requests will be redirected, including page links, so nothing out there in the wild will be broken. The blog theme will probably change in the near future to more closely match the website.

Visitors can now connect to us and other SCOM fans through several different social media outlets. If you want to stay informed about our free training videos, new blog posts, and latest developments, “like” us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter, and subscribe to the YouTube channel below. Please be patient as content is rolled out to these external apps. Your support is greatly appreciated!

When I was asked to contribute to this book, I didn’t hesitate at the opportunity to be a part of what is considered to be the most comprehensive technical resource for System Center engineers and enthusiasts around the world. This is the first official publication I’ve been involved in, and am proud to have had the opportunity to share my experiences at this level.

I hope the community receives this book well, and that this edition lives up to its reputation! Thanks to Kerrie Meyler, Cameron Fuller, and John Joyner for doing such a great job in supporting the contributors and to keep things moving along.